JOINT BASE LEWIS-McCHORD, Wash. — The U.S. soldiers allegedly floated a plan as simple as it was savage: to randomly target and kill an Afghan civilian, and to get away with it.
For weeks, according to Army charging documents, rogue members of a platoon from the 5th Stryker Combat Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, hatched the idea. Then, one day last winter, a solitary Afghan man approached them in the village of La Mohammed Kalay. The "kill team" activated the plan.
One soldier (...)read more, comments...

Recent democratic elections in five years have been marked by accusations of electoral fraud unambiguous (Iran and Afghanistan), international isolation of the democratically elected governments (Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Gaza Strip), pseudo-elections to try to sugarcoat " soft hand strikes "(Honduras) and acceptance by the international community turned-political systems in mere autocratic governments (Belarus, Georgia and Russia), which suggests that we would be on the eve (...)read more, comments...

Israeli academics boycott settlements
THURSDAY, 02 SEPTEMBER 2010 16:27 Over 150 Israeli academics say they will no longer take part in cultural activities or lecture in the occupied West Bank settlement of Ariel.
Press TV reported: In a signed petition, faculty members from universities across Israel vowed not to lecture or participate in any discussions in the illegal settlements area and voiced support for the theater artists who have said they would refuse to perform in this West (...)read more, comments...

THE MISNOMER OF PEACE TALKS
John Chuckman
I don’t know how anyone given the task could draw a map of Israel: it is likely the only country in the world with no defined borders, and it actually has worked very hard over many decades to achieve this peculiar state.
It once had borders, but the 1967 war took care of those. It has no intention of ever returning to them because it could have done so at any time in the last forty-three years (an act which would have been the clearest (...)read more, comments...

Non-combat US troops in Iraq engage in combat
by Boris Volkhonsky
Global Research, September 6, 2010 Voice of Russia
On September 5, US troops were called in by Iraqi authorities to help combat insurgents who attacked an army base in Baghdad. There were no casualties among the American military and the whole incident would hardly be worth mentioning be it not for the fact that American participation in combat took place only five days after the widely advertised pullout of all US combat (...)read more, comments...

When some 60 leading Israeli actors and playwrights signed a letter stating they would refuse to play in the new theatre in Ariel, one of Israel’s largest settlements, the attacks from Prime Minister Netanyahu, Israel’s Minister of Culture and Sport and many others were swift and intense. Over 150 leading Israeli academics and writers-including Amos Oz and David Grossman- came to their defense. It was the first time such mainstream figures had drawn a line around normalizing (...)read more, comments...

The movement for a cultural boycott of Israel in response to its treatment of the Palestinians, modelled on the boycott of apartheid South Africa, could eclipse decades of disingenuous political charades in engaging western intellectuals, academics and artists. Internationally renowned figures such as Naomi Klein and Ken Loach have supported the call, and now one of Britain’s most successful bands, Massive Attack, is publicly backing the boycott.
“I’ve always felt that (...)read more, comments...

VIDEO: Pentagon’s Half-Billion-Dollar PR Budget to Sell Afghan War
by grtv
$547 million. That’s the Pentagon’s P.R. budget. They’re using it to spread mistruths and misplaced hope in ‘progress’ with one goal in mind: to extend the brutal, costly Afghanistan War.
General Petraeus’ media blitz is only the tip of the iceberg in the Pentagon’s effort to sell war to the American people. The Defense Department has a budget of more than $500 (...)read more, comments...

The new strategy of the Obama Administration’s Middle East seek to deepen the lines of negotiation "multilateral" (including the opening of a direct line to the Tehran regime and the establishment of an Arab ally in front, to isolate the hawks militarists, both Tehran and Tel Aviv) and would be further supported in the new UN sanctions on Iran with the aim of achieving real weakening of the Iranian economy and the possible revival of the "Green Tide" and supplemented with measures of (...)read more, comments...

Several months ago, a religious school in the illegal Israeli settlement of Immanuel was criticized for segregating white Jewish students from non-white Jewish students in classes.
Ethiopian Jewish student - not allowed to study at new school (photo by Jewish Middlesex)
Originally, the school was fined for this policy of racial segregation, because the school was state funded. Now, the Israeli education ministry has agreed with the white parents’ request to allow the school to (...)read more, comments...

(San Francisco) – Israel, a nuclear weapons armed colossus in the Middle East, fights a lot of wars with two small, almost defenseless neighboring countries – Lebanon and Gaza. The 2006 War with Lebanon took a turn for the worse, though.
Israel executed an emergency purchase for 100 plus US GBU-28 5,000 lb, or 2,722 kg, weaponized uranium aerosol bombs from their patron, the United States.
The GBU-28 is a cobbled together weapon consisting of an approximately 20 ft long (...)read more, comments...

John Chuckman
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...
Too early to write-off direct talks?
Please.
Representatives for these "direct talks" on the Palestinian side in a sense do not even exist: Abbas’s election mandate timed out a year ago, and he stays in office under emergency measures – i..e,, he has absolutely no democratic legitimacy.
But even poor Abbas, a kind of Palestinian "step’n’fetch it" figure if ever there was one, wanted nothing to do with such (...)read more, comments...

Today is August 15, Indian Independence Day, the anniversary of British departure from India and Pakistan and the cessation of a 2-century Indian Holocaust that killed 1.8 billion Indians through dire deprivation. Pakistan abandoned its Independence Day (14 August) celebrations because of the floods disaster but the US has continued its cowardly robot drone bombing attacks on defenceless Pakistani villages.
It was reported today, India Independence Day, that the Pakistani Prime Minister (...)read more, comments...

If Opium Funds Terrorism then Arrest the Queen of England
Sep 8th, 2009 | By Keelan Balderson
A lot of recent headlines in the mainstream press have discussed the vast amount of poppy fields in Afghanistan that are under Taliban control. The assertion is that these fields which produce ingredients used in opium and heroin production are being cultivated by the Taliban to fund their various terrorist operations.[1]
It is a fact that Afghanistan had a 95% monopoly over the world’s (...)read more, comments...

Posted at 03:54 on 09 August, 2010 UTC
Amnesty International says New Zealand’s new aid policy is sending the wrong message to the Pacific.
The group’s Pacific researcher Apolosi Bose says the Vanuatu Women’s Centre is one NGO facing difficulties under New Zealand’s change of direction.
The centre says without the 100 thousand US dollars in annual assistance, the organisation will have to shut its doors in Luganville.
“Wrong messages are being sent to the (...)read more, comments...

By Chris Patten Published on August 8, 2010
IT IS easier to enter a maximum-security prison than it is to enter the strip of land – 45 kilometres long and maybe eight wide – that is home to Gaza’s 1.5 million Palestinians. Surrounded by a forbidding wall, watchtowers, and deadly buffer zones, I entered with a hard-to-obtain visa at the Erez crossing – iron gates, an interrogation by bored young immigration officers and scanners. On the other side is a kilometre-long (...)read more, comments...

So far Turkey has lived polarized between secular nationalism, typical of more developed urban areas, and traditional Islam which has sheltered the most disadvantaged rural population. and the purpose of reshaping the modern Turkey, Erdogan, new "father of the fatherland" (Atatürk), trying to bring Islam, nationalism and Europeanism with their entry into the EU.
The ruling Justice and Development (Adalet Partisi, or AKP sees Kalkınma), often called in Turkey Ak Parti, "and that his (...)read more, comments...

Reports out of Pakistan now indicate that about 1,500 people have lost their lives and tens of thousands have been left homeless. This years monsoon, which began July 28, is said to have affected 3.2
million people in northwest Pakistan. The most urgent need is clean drinking water followed by food, shelter and sanitation and medicines. Homes, bridges, roads and agricultural land has been swept away
leaving scores of families with no homes or livelihood.
The potential for disease is (...)read more, comments...

Dangerous Illusions
by James Zogby (Monday, August 2, 2010)
"That another war will create peace; that more arms that only provoke your dangerous better-armed and unrestrained neighbor will make you secure; that bad policy made under the duress of domestic politics will produce anything other than bad results - these are the dangerous illusions under which all have been laboring for decades, and apparently still are."
After a century in which tragedy has been heaped upon tragedy across (...)read more, comments...

British Judge: "Israel is Nazi regime"
Judge faces anti-Semitism probe after speech attacking Israel helps free arms factory protesters
By STEVE DOUGHTY, SOCIAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT
Remarks: Judge Bathurst-Norman is being investigated after summing up in a trial which led to protesters being acquitted
A senior judge was under investigation yesterday after being accused of making anti-Semitic remarks in court that may have swayed his jury into acquitting a group of protesters.
Judge (...)read more, comments...

The far-right in Ukraine are acting as the vanguard of a protest movement that is being reported as pro-democracy. The situation on the ground is not as simple as pro-EU and trade versus pro-Putin and Russian hegemony in the region.
When US Senator John McCain dined with Ukraine’s opposition leaders in December, he shared a table and later a stage with the leader of the extreme far-right Svoboda party Oleh Tyahnybok.
This is Oleh Tyahnybok, he has claimed a "Moscow-Jewish mafia" (...)

Your support here: http://www.peaceinsyria.org/support.php
We, the undersigned, who are part of an international civil society increasingly worried about the awful bloodshed of the Syrian people, are supporting a political initiative based on the results of a fact-finding mission which some of our colleagues undertook to Beirut and Damascus in September 2012. This initiative consists in calling for a delegation of highranking personalities and public figures to go to Syria in order to (...)

At first glance, the results of America’s 2012 election appear to be a triumph for social, racial, and economic justice and progress in the United States: California voters passed a proposition requiring the rich to shoulder their fair share of the tax burden; Two states, Colorado and Washington, legalized the recreational use of marijuana, while Massachusetts approved the use of marijuana for medical purposes; Washington and two other states, Maine and Maryland, legalized same-sex (...)

In a 2004 episode of Comedy Central’s animated series South Park, an election was held to determine whether the new mascot for the town’s elementary school would be a “giant douche” or a “turd sandwich.” Confronted with these two equally unpalatable choices, one child, Stan Marsh, refused to vote at all, which resulted in his ostracization and subsequent banishment from the town.
Although this satirical vulgarity was intended as a commentary on the two (...)

PART I
PART II
PART III
If there is one major inconsistency in life, it is that young people who know little more than family, friends and school are suddenly, at the age of eighteen, supposed to decide what they want to do for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately, because of their limited life experiences, the illusions they have about certain occupations do not always comport to the realities.
I discovered this the first time I went to college. About a year into my studies, I (...)

PART I
PART II
PART IV
Disillusioned with the machinations of so-called “traditional” colleges, I became an adjunct instructor at several “for-profit” colleges.
Thanks largely to the power and pervasiveness of the Internet, “for-profit” colleges (hereinafter for-profits) have become a growing phenomenon in America. They have also been the subject of much political debate and the focus of a Frontline special entitled College Inc.
Unlike traditional (...)

PART I
PART III
PART IV
Several years ago, a young lady came into the college where I was teaching to inquire about a full-time instructor’s position in the sociology department. She was advised that only adjunct positions were available. Her response was, “No thanks. Once an adjunct, always an adjunct.”
Her words still echo in my mind.
Even as colleges and universities raise their tuition costs, they are relying more and more on adjunct instructors. Adjuncts are (...)

PART II
PART III
PART IV
When The Bill of Rights was added to the United States Constitution over two hundred years ago, Americans were blessed with many rights considered to be “fundamental.” One conspicuously missing, however, was the right to an education.
This was not surprising given the tenor of the times. America was primarily an agrarian culture, and education, especially higher education, was viewed as a privilege reserved for the children of the rich and (...)

If there is one universal question that haunts all human beings at some point in their lives, it is, “Why do we die?”
Death, after all, is the great illogic. It ultimately claims all, the rich and the poor, the mighty and the small, the good and the evil. Death also has the capability to make most human pursuits—such as the quest for wealth, fame and power—vacuous and fleeting.
Given this reality, I have often wondered why so many people are still willing to (...)

How much corruption can a “democracy” endure before it ceases to be a democracy?
If five venal, mendacious, duplicitous, amoral, biased and (dare I say it) satanic Supreme Court “justices”—John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy—have their way, America will soon find out.
In several previous articles for Pravda.Ru, I have consistently warned how the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision is one of the (...)

Imagine, if you will, that the United States government passes a law banning advertisers from sponsoring commercials on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show or Rupert Murdoch’s Fox (Faux) “News” Network.
On one hand, there would be two decided advantages to this ban: The National IQ would undoubtedly increase several percentage points, and manipulative pseudo-journalists would no longer be able to appeal to the basest instincts in human nature for ratings and profit while (...)

LIVE, from the State that brought you Senator Joseph McCarthy, Wisconsin voters now proudly present, fresh from his recall election victory, Governor Scott Walker!
At first glance, it is almost unfathomable that anyone with a modicum of intelligence would have voted to retain Scott Walker as Wisconsin’s governor. This, after all, is a man who openly declared he is trying to destroy the rights of workers through a “divide and conquer” strategy; who received 61% of the (...)

A question I’ve frequently been asked since I began writing for Pravda.Ru in 2003 is, “Why did you become disillusioned with the practice of law?”
This question is understandable, particularly since, in most people’s minds, being an attorney is synonymous with wealth and political power.
I’ve always been reluctant to answer this question for fear it will discourage conscientious and ethical people from pursuing careers in the legal profession—a (...)